Child Heart

Inside your heart there’s a natural power that makes you want to feel perfect, that life is great, that every second is fresh and joyful and happy, and that the future is exciting. Your heart is always searching for this feeling, especially when you are a child.

As a child, your only goal is to be happy – not in the future, but now. Your only desire for the future is that it is just like the present. But your child mind is not wise. You have a beautiful Child Heart, but you are not mature enough to handle the complexities of human life; naturally, you experience a lot of suffering.

As you grow up, that suffering creates fear and your heart searches for security instead of happiness. It becomes greedy and blind, and you don’t understand why you feel unhappy. You have lost your direction.

Wisdom

To remain perfect and feel all the happiness, you need two powers. The first is to remain in Child Heart. The second is to gain wisdom and maturity. But these two will get polluted.

It’s like a mirror: when it’s dirty, the reflection power disappears, and you cannot see yourself. When your heart is covered with too much dust, you cannot see yourself any more.

What is the dust of your heart? It’s your blind habit. You have the blind habits of your emotional problems, your mentality, your way of thinking about life and yourself, and your worry about what others think of you. You give yourself so much stress.

When I was young I realised that I didn’t care what others thought of me. The only opinion I valued was my own: How do I truly feel? Am I being the person I want to be? Am I really being honest with my heart and living the way my heart thinks is correct? Am I worrying about other peoples’ opinions?

Of course, it’s not smart to ignore other people completely, and then say they’re wrong because your heart tells you so. If you do that, you create a wall between you and the rest of the world. That’s stupid.

You must follow the middle way using Waterman Technique. When water flows, it doesn’t push directly against anything; it keeps moving and turning to find the path of least resistance.

Observation

So I do what my heart tells me that it truly wants. I find a way to not push against anyone or anything, but I don’t let people control me, either. I carefully listen to my heart and observe life; I don’t jump into anything without thinking about it first.

At first, using that observing power was difficult, but with time it brought me more wisdom and I become sharper. Now, I can read your thoughts, I can read your intention, I can read your emotion, and I can read your desire. When you have a pure, open heart to observe everything, everything becomes crystal clear.

The reason you can’t see other people clearly is that you see what you want to see. You are blinded by your ego and desire. They restrict your vision as if you are looking at the sky through a keyhole. Once you open the door, you aren’t limited to the keyhole and can see that the sky stretches from horizon to horizon.

There are two steps to develop this power.

Back to the Essence

What is the essence? When you are born, you don’t know the difference between good and bad, you don’t judge what is good or bad: you are pure. The “No Good, No Bad” philosophy brings you total freedom.

Every day, you grow older and start thinking, “That’s good, I want it” or “That’s bad, I don’t want it.” Every judgement goes to your heart, making it heavier and heavier. Eventually it is so heavy that you feel bad and you don’t know why. Stress and depression come from having this judgemental ego. You have to let that go.

No Good, No Bad purifies you. Another way to look at it is not to have a searching heart. When you search for something you automatically start judging what is good and what is bad. Why not enjoy life instead?

This doesn’t mean you cannot make plans; just don’t do so with ego or greedy intention. If you want to be Prime Minister of Australia, then go right ahead, as long as you can do it without stress. Any desire, any goal without stress is pure. The more stress you experience, the less pure your intention.

Not searching doesn’t mean you can’t have goals, just that they shouldn’t create stress. When you don’t have a Searching Heart, the future becomes light. If ever I feel heavy, I sit in the garden, breathe deeply, observe my intention, and release my heart. Nothing is important, I am searching for nothing. Then a gentle joy appears and my body becomes light. I feel happy without any reason.

However, if you stay in that meditation, you will get bored. “I am searching for nothing and I am happy, but happy for what?” So you need a second step…

Organise Your Priorities

After you have purified yourself and freed yourself from searching, reorganise your priorities to match the value of life. Don’t make them possessive or negative; direct them towards the perfect.

Understand what perfect life is, then concentrate on that perfect goal all the time. If you don’t do the first step to become free, you will lose your connection to that perfect goal.

What is the perfect goal of life? Simply, it is to love life. Not the personal, ego, possessive kind of love: that’s called Greedy Love. Buddhism teaches us to avoid this relationship in favour of True Love.

What is True Love?

You don’t want to feel pain, so you don’t want anyone else to feel pain. When your Caring Heart sees anyone in pain, you want to ease their suffering. That is True Love, which is the meaning of life.

You want to enjoy life and feel happy, so you want other people to enjoy life and feel happy, too. Your natural heart is to bring them joy and share happiness. That’s the true value of your heart.

When you are aware of the perfect goal without pollution, greed, or ego, you get so much power because you create unlimited care and joy. To achieve that, you need wisdom. Buddhist philosophy helps you develop your wisdom to purify yourself. You will be freed from your negative side and awaken to more and more wisdom. You will be able to analyse life, see clearly, handle any situation without stress, and enjoy life.

Conclusion

1. Remain in Child Heart.
2. Develop wisdom and maturity.
3. Clean out your Judgemental Heart.
4. Create a priority to love life by caring for yourself and others, and be free.

Freedom doesn’t come easily; it needs discipline, patience, concentration, and to unite your consciousness without contradiction. When you do this, meditation power appears. It’s not sitting still and breathing while imagining something; it’s a power behind many other powers that you have to build step by step.

To build up your ability to enjoy life, to be completely free, you have to develop the Six Bodhisattva Characters. These will help you to get rid of all your stress.

This post is taken from a talk by Forever Wisdom Forest on 5 June 2011 at the Sydney dojo.

Dharma Kindness addition:

Child Heart vs Worry – One difference is the timing…

• Child heart
  • present is awesome and future is awesome
  • So heart full of magic now and in future! Yay! 🙂
• Adult heart
  • present is responsibility, future is worry
  • worry come from self-doubt (negative judgemental attitude) from our action in the past…
  • So past negative – present negative – future negative…..
  • happy heart is mission impossible! 🙂
• That is why you can never trust worry. Worry guarantee’s you will be a loser forever. Ouch 🙂
• Instead,
  • create wise choice in the present.
  • Then past full of wisdom and joy
  • present full of wisdom and joy
  • future no need to worry anymore… full of more wisdom and joy 🙂